Sleeping Around (28 page)

I caught the incredibly crowded Metro into the city. Public transport was free throughout the three-day holiday and, as John put it, ‘All the foockin' idiots from the suburbs go on public transport just for the hell of it'. The tram was even more crowded. So much so, in fact, that the impatient folk at the tram stops didn't even wait for passengers to get off as they pushed and shoved their way aboard.

At every stop, more and more people somehow squeezed on until my face was rammed up against a fellow who could very easily have been mistaken for a gorilla. I was getting to experience a real Turkish bath as sweat dripped off everyone squished up against me. At one point the tram got so packed that the driver couldn't shut the doors. He tried and tried, and in the process kept slamming them into people's faces. The gorilla next to me began freaking out a little and started screaming and ranting at the driver and shoving people around. When the driver finally closed the doors, he kept on abusing him. The driver soon got his revenge, though. He suddenly slammed on the brakes and sent everyone surging forward. There was more abuse, so he slammed on the brakes again even harder. It was like some sadistic amusement-park ride. I got off one stop after the one I wanted, and even then I only escaped because Mr Gorilla pushed me out.

I devoted the rest of the day to the Istanbul Tourist Trifecta: the Blue Mosque, Hagia Sophia and Topkapi Palace.

The magnificent Blue Mosque (which was grey, but I won't bicker) is a mass of domes and arches topped with six slim minarets pointing heavenwards like defending rockets. James had another name for this famous place of worship:
Kokan Ayaklarin Büyük evi Kokan Ayaklar Konagi
, or The Grand House of the Smelly Feet. I added to the smell somewhat when I took off my sweaty boots, thanks to my time on The Grand Tram of the Sweaty Commuter. Inside the mosque was a huge open space with no pews, no icons, no ornaments, just acres of soft carpet and rows of devout people kneeling and praying. And not-so-devout Turkish teenagers. They were all taking photos of each other with their mobile phones underneath large signs saying NO PHOTOGRAPHS.

When we non-believers were ushered out for the official prayers, I saw the same teenagers slouching on steps under a huge sign which read: SITTING ON STEPS IS ABSOLUTELY FORBIDDEN.

The Hagia Sophia, which was built in the sixth century, was the largest enclosed space for more than a millennium. When I was there it happened to be housing a huge, and world-renowned, sculpture that travels extensively around major historical sites throughout Europe. Amazingly, and almost eerily, I seem to catch it a lot in my travels. I'm not sure of the exact date of the sculpture, which filled up about a quarter of the space inside and reached all the way to the top of the dome roof, but I'm guessing probably late last century. That's when I think most modern scaffolding was built. Admittedly, it was up there with the best when it came to nice scaffolding. It had a rather fetching matching orange staircase and fence around it. The Japanese tourists seemed to be impressed. They were taking lots of photos of it. I wandered past Thai, German, Italian, Spanish and French tour groups who were all undoubtedly talking about the intricate detail in the joinery work of the scaffolding.

Topkapi Palace was the administrative and erotic centre for the rulers of the Ottoman empire. I won't go into too much detail, but it is big, opulent and has lots of old stuff. It also gave me the chance to collect another site whose name has become generic, like Geysir in Iceland. Topkapi Palace was home to the many wives of successive Turkish sultans. The wives slept in a hall called ‘Harim', which then began to be used as a generic name for the home of many wives. This famous harem typically housed at times up to a thousand women. That's a lot of nagging about leaving the toilet seat up.

I watched the sun set majestically over the Blue Mosque from the tram stop. I had to wait almost an hour for a tram that wasn't bursting at the seams with ‘foockin' idiots from the suburbs'.

Back at the
bant
offices, everyone was still working hard. ‘I'm so sorry,' James lamented. ‘We're not very good guides.'

‘That's okay,' I said. ‘It can't be helped.'

‘We've just got some dinner, if you want some.' James said.

Dinner was tuna sandwiches, Doritos and bottles of Diet Coke, but it wasn't quite the traditional Turkish cuisine I was hoping for. When I asked where I might find some traditional Turkish fare, James recommended a restaurant around the corner.

Külünçe Sofrasi restaurant was a traditional Turkish restaurant (but minus the belly-dancing show). The restaurant didn't serve alcohol, but that was fine by me. I was having an AFD (Alcohol-Free Day) anyway. Not only was it nice (and nicer for my liver) to take a night off from drinking, it was also just nice to have a night out by myself. One of the problems with couch surfing is that, as a guest, you feel obliged to be constantly ‘entertaining' your hosts. You can't just sit back at your host's house and say ‘pass me the TV remote and keep the noise down will ya'. Although maybe I could cater for that market by starting up my own website: GlobalCouchPotato.com.

Külünçe Sofrasi restaurant fitted my ‘no English menu' criterion, but there weren't any English-speaking staff either, so ordering was a little more tricky. I had one of those uneasy exchanges you experience whilst travelling where you ask for something with a mix of English and charades (and it's not easy doing ‘What's the specialty of the house?'), then the waiter speaks for five minutes in their own language pointing at something on the menu that you can't read anyway.

For all I know this guy was saying that, since you are a stupid tourist who has accidentally wandered into a restaurant where the waiters do not wear fezzes and you can't understand a word of what I am telling you, allow me to recommend the least popular and most expensive dish on the menu.

I just nodded my head and said, ‘Yes, that would be lovely!'

I think I may have ordered ‘the banquet for ten'. My ‘entrée' of bread and dips was a meal in itself. The flat Turkish bread was the size of a placemat. The main course was a platter piled with chicken wings,
köfte
(meatballs), shish kebabs, pizza, various
böreks
(savoury filled pastries), large grilled green chillies, grilled tomatoes and salad. When my waiter served it up, he spent a good ten minutes explaining everything that was on the plate to me in Turkish.

When I waddled back to the
bant
office, James said, ‘I rang some friends and they will take you out for a drink if you like.'

‘Um . . . I'm actually happy just to hang out here,' I said. ‘Plus I'm having an Alcohol-Free Day.'

‘I'm so sorry,' James said two hours later. ‘You must be so bored.'

‘I've been out every night for the past five weeks,' I said. ‘I'm so happy to be bored.'

I was so happy to be bored, in fact, that I fell asleep at one of the desks. James and Aylin finally called it a day (or night in this case) at 12.30. ‘Shall we go out for a quick drink?' James asked.

‘What about my Alcohol-Free Day?'

‘It's after twelve, so it's technically the next day,' James said.

‘Yeah, okay.'

James had a very romantic morning for two planned: picking up the wedding rings that James and Aylin had helped design at a jewellers in the Grand Bazaar, and then having a massage together. Except it wasn't that romantic, because it was just James and me.

Istanbul is not only the home of Europe's biggest shopping mall, it's also home to Europe's oldest shopping mall. The very grand Grand Bazaar is made up of 60 covered streets with more than 4000 shops housing stalls that have been selling the same wares for centuries—gold and silver jewellery, copperware, pottery, carpets and Viagra. Near the gold jewellery section was the spice market (as in spice-up-your-marriage market). Rows of stalls were selling, amongst other things, Deadly Shark Power Delay Spray (for your premature ejaculation); Super Stay Delay Spray; mega-packs of Viagra; and an impressive collection of porn DVDs. The fellow selling Deadly Shark Power Delay Spray was holding up a box and bellowing out in Turkish, which James translated as something like ‘Go like a ram all night'.

Most of the stalls in the Grand Bazaar were closed for the holidays, but there were still more than enough merchants to pester us. Thankfully, having a local with me meant that I was mostly left alone. And when we did get hassled by a couple of persistently insistent shopkeepers, James said something to get rid of them very quickly. I'm not sure what he said, but I guessed it was ‘I'm going to pour concrete into your mother's pussy, so I can't fuck her and neither can your father'.

James still had a lot of work to do on the magazine, but he very kindly offered to spend the morning with me and try to squeeze in as many quintessential Turkish experiences as we could into a couple of hours. After we'd sprinted around the market, we ducked through a tiny doorway leading off the street, to a large open courtyard that was decked out with colourful carpets, low tables and glass cabinets filled with water pipes that lined the walls. ‘The locals bring their own and leave them here,' James said. ‘You can't come to Turkey and not have a water pipe,' he said as we perused the water pipe menu, which came in flavours of banana, strawberry, cappuccino, chocolate and apple.

‘We used to come here every day when I was at university,' James said as we sat back, puffing away.

‘Did you study journalism?' I asked.

‘No. Spanish,' he shrugged. ‘And most of my friends from uni are now Spanish tour guides.'

The last stop on our whistle-stop tour was the Çemberlitas Hamami, a Turkish bath house that was built in 1584. We booked in for the full-service grease and oil change.

‘You. Undress. Now,' the locker attendant barked at me. ‘Go in locker.'

‘In locker?' I asked incredulously.

The locker, which was actually a small cubicle, even had a bed.

‘You remember me for tip, okay?' he winked.

After I'd barely covered my naked body with a tiny towel we headed into the steam room (the
hararet
), which had a high-domed ceiling with walls and floor of silver-grey marble. We were instructed to lie on a massive heated marble slab where I promptly dozed off to asleep. I woke with a fright to howling and moaning. It was James being pummelled and pulled apart by a gorilla. My masseur, who I'm guessing was once part of the Turkish wrestling team, approached me with a rough mitt on one hand and a bucket of suds in the other. He then began singing lustily as he exfoliated my skin, or more like tore it off, while he poured boiling water and soap suds all over me.

This was followed by a massage, which involved my large friend mounting me and trying to tear my limbs off. It was my turn to howl and moan. He finished off the ‘relaxing' massage by throwing a bucket of ice-cold water over my head.

‘You remember me for tip, okay?' he said. That wasn't going to be easy. All the staff looked identical with their dark curly hair, hairy chests, long droopy moustaches and bulbous bellies.

After our greasing, it was time for the oiling. A different, but identical, masseur oiled me up for more stretching, bashing, pummelling and howling.

Admittedly, after a lovely hot shower, I felt incredibly relaxed and refreshed. Then we got on a packed tram and in less than a minute I was hot, bothered and stressed again.

James went back to work while I went to a restaurant that James had suggested for lunch. Hamdi et Lokantasi Restaurant was on the rooftop of an apartment building that overlooked Galata Bridge and the Golden Horn. The view was outstanding, although I was put in the corner with an outstanding view of the waiter's station. At the top of the menu it had: ‘Hamdi—The same taste and address since 1970.' The time-warp effect went further than that. They had also retained the same plates and cutlery and the same waiters wearing the same uniforms.

Thankfully, the fish and kebabs I ordered were more recent additions.

As I left the restaurant, a taxi slowed down out the front and the driver asked if I wanted a ‘ride for you'. I said yes and jumped straight in. I had planned to see more of the city, but I was so tired I was more than happy just to head back to the
bant
office and do very little at all.

James and Aylin were initially a bit surprised when, just after eight o'clock, I asked if I could head back to the apartment because I was ready for bed. They were then pleasantly surprised to discover that the reason I was so looking forward to bed was that I had bestowed the highest ranking so far on their ‘couch'.

Couch rating: 9/10
Pro: A big comfy double quilt
Con: Not quite as comfy single-quilted toilet paper in the ensuite